Has anyone perceived a single Brexit benefit yet?

[Bryn]

The EU has not decided it was a mistake after all and they will not invoke protocol 16 - now they get the worst of all possible worlds having demonstrated that when they see it in their own benefit they are willing to override it - now maybe wiser heads can get together and sort out both messes.

Oops. I take it you intended "The EU has now", not "not".

[Anastasius]

Just thought of one 'benefit'. (I'm joking)

Luckily I'm not going to be affected but I would have been and I truly feel sorry for any poor sods trying to take equipment for demo purposes into the EU. (Covid notwithstanding).


If you want to take said equipment into the EU for demo purposes to try and win a sale, then this is for you. It's called the Carnet Game and will make you lose the will to live. Some of you will remember playing this before we joined the EU. For those who have never heard of it, read on.

It's a game played between you and an infinite number of paper stamping Customs officials along your journey. The game is played like this.


Before you leave the UK, you deposit a large sum of money as a deposit. You pay through the nose to get your Carnet which is a bundle of papers clipped inside a cardboard sleeve. You have lots of pieces of paper per country that you are going to travel through. And on the back sheet if the cardboard sleeve are spaces for your stamps. You jump on a ferry at Dover, hand over your "Leaving the UK" paper and get a Customs stamp on the sleeve. You enter France and queue for ages waiting for Customs to check your equipment matches what it says on the front of your cardboard sleeve. If you're really unlucky, you will get an anally-retentive Customs official who will insist on you dismantling the equipment to show him the serial number on a printed circuit board before he will take the "Entering France" paper and stamp your sleeve. Then when you leave France to enter Germany, you'll hand over your "Leaving France" and another stamp. And naturally the German Customs official will take the "Entering Germany" paper and give you another stamp.


You get the picture ? And the opposite happens as you wend your weary way back to the UK. You win if you have all the necessary stamps on the sleeve and you then get your deposit back. Good game. Good game.

[jayne lee wilson]

This was a very lively discussion, a fair hearing given to every view....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rvq0

Fascinating to hear the clips from the same people 5 years before, then their views today......I think it's fair to say that most of the rueful realism was on one side of the debate, but see what you think....

[teamsaint]

Just thought of one 'benefit'. (I'm joking)

Luckily I'm not going to be affected but I would have been and I truly feel sorry for any poor sods trying to take equipment for demo purposes into the EU. (Covid notwithstanding).

If you want to take said equipment into the EU for demo purposes to try and win a sale, then this is for you. It's called the Carnet Game and will make you lose the will to live. Some of you will remember playing this before we joined the EU. For those who have never heard of it, read on.

It's a game played between you and an infinite number of paper stamping Customs officials along your journey. The game is played like this.


Before you leave the UK, you deposit a large sum of money as a deposit. You pay through the nose to get your Carnet which is a bundle of papers clipped inside a cardboard sleeve. You have lots of pieces of paper per country that you are going to travel through. And on the back sheet if the cardboard sleeve are spaces for your stamps. You jump on a ferry at Dover, hand over your "Leaving the UK" paper and get a Customs stamp on the sleeve. You enter France and queue for ages waiting for Customs to check your equipment matches what it says on the front of your cardboard sleeve. If you're really unlucky, you will get an anally-retentive Customs official who will insist on you dismantling the equipment to show him the serial number on a printed circuit board before he will take the "Entering France" paper and stamp your sleeve. Then when you leave France to enter Germany, you'll hand over your "Leaving France" and another stamp. And naturally the German Customs official will take the "Entering Germany" paper and give you another stamp.


You get the picture ? And the opposite happens as you wend your weary way back to the UK. You win if you have all the necessary stamps on the sleeve and you then get your deposit back. Good game. Good game.

.

About five years ago my son took a 3D printer and a drone from London to a trade fair in Sao Paolo. No papers, nothing , easy as winking.
Till his return flight was diverted via Paris, where the customs guys saw fit to impound the lot.
Make of that what you will.